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Looks as if Amazon's invite-only MARS conference in Palm Springs, California, is now an annual tradition. Last week, Amazon threw another event, according to photographer Ric Miller, who lives next to the hotel where the event took place and took some photos for us.

Miller, an IT consultant who has worked for Stanford University's medical school, got wind of the event when he saw a Blue Origin rocket sticking up over the hotel's hedge. He immediately recognized what it was and whom it belonged to.

Dave Limp, the Amazon senior vice president behind Alexa, opened the show with a keynote. But the highlight was when Bezos piloted a 13-foot robot from Hankook Mirae Technology.

Here's a video of Bezos in that robot tweeted out by attendee Caleb Harper of MIT Media Lab Open Agriculture Initiative. (Harper is working on computerized ways to grow food.) Other people got to try out this robot, too.

This year, like last year, Kiva robots served food and drinks. These are the robots that run Amazon warehouses made by Kiva Systems, the company Amazon bought for $775 million. Last year, Bezos was spotted drinking single malt whiskey with some of the attendees.

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Last year, a robot called NABiROS roamed the party too. NABiROS stands for Non-Anthropomorphic Bipedal Robotic System and was built by the robotics team at UCLA. Other demos were done by the HyQ quadruped robot and the MIT Cheetah robot.

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This is how much Bezos topped himself over last year: In 2016, he showed up onstage wearing a robotic suit. This year, he showed up suited in an actual robot.

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This isn't the first invitation-only event held by Amazon, according to Bloomberg. It also does an event called Campfire for authors once a year in Santa Fe, New Mexico.